The Lady Queen

by Nancy Goldstone

  Unfortunately, this enlightened tribute to medieval scholarship, however significant in the long term, represented but a fleeting diversion from the cares of an increasingly perilous political and economic reality. The state of continental affairs was especially distressing. The first volleys in the Anglo-French conflagration, which would eventually be known as the Hundred Years’ War, had been hurled by Edward III of England. In danger of losing Gascony, which was all that remained of England’s once-extensive possessions in France, Edward had begun a deliberate campaign in 1337 to woo allies with the intention of isolating and encircling the French. In 1338, he traveled in great state to Flanders, where, “by fair speeches, promises, and a bountiful distribution of money,” he secured not only Flemish support, but that of Germany and the Low Countries through the favor of the Holy Roman Emperor. Buoyed by these diplomatic successes, in 1340, Edward, who asserted a claim to the French throne through his mother, began publicly referring to himself as the king of England and France, as a provocation to the reigning king of France, Philip VI, Catherine of Valois’ brother. The following year, he landed a military force in the duchy of Brittany, traditionally a vassal state of France. To counter, Philip relied on Naples and the papacy, for the pope, although publicly offering to negotiate a peace, overwhelmingly favored the French, not least because, by 1341, a full 60 percent of the papal income emanated from France.

  The Florentine super-companies were torn, however. The great Neapolitan grain trade, so important in past decades to their financial well-being, had metamorphosed from a boon to a burden. By the 1330s, the three super-companies that shared the grain monopoly—those of the Bardi, the Peruzzi, and the Acciaiuoli families—had developed a vast and highly specialized organization designed to manage every aspect of the market, from harvest to mill. Their senior partners negotiated with officials from Robert’s government on contracts to purchase all the kingdom’s grain on a yearly basis, “and they did not hestitate to approach the king with complaints whenever they encountered difficulties with them [the Neapolitan officials].” They not only purchased the grain; they collected the cereal at its source, brought it to port, and shipped it on galleys rented from Venice and Genoa to clients up and down the Mediterranean and the Adriatic. To reach inland customers such as those in Bologna, they transported the grain by barge up the Po River; to reach Florence, they went overland by cart. Their position and influence in the kingdom of Naples was unprecedented. In addition to the grain trade, the super-companies formed a syndicate that “collected taxes, transported cash, paid bureaucrats’ salaries and troops’ wages, and managed military stores.”

  Despite these assiduous attempts to orchestrate every phase of the market, however, the super-companies’ business was exposed to many risks, chief among which was an unfavorable change in weather conditions. Grain, as the primary component of the Mediterranean diet, and thus a necessity of life, was a politically charged commodity. Too much or too little rain could produce scarcity, even famine, which in turn invited governmental price regulation. This was particularly true of the super-companies’ home state of Florence, which relied heavily on the importation of Neapolitan grain to feed its citizens. Fearful of public unrest if the cost of bread rose too high, the ruling council of Florence frequently imposed price restraints on the super-companies’ sales of grain, which resulted in a series of losses in the early 1330s. Additionally, beginning in 1333, King Robert, who needed money to finance his wars with Sicily, began imposing an export tax on wheat, which further degraded the super-companies’ profit margins. Debts went unpaid, and capitalization was threatened; investors were losing confidence and demanding the return of their deposits.

  In desperation, the super-companies sought new sources of revenue and settled on the English wool trade as the only market large enough to return the firms to their former levels of prosperity. English wool was considered the finest in the world. Access to this market meant that Florentine manufacturers could process high-grade luxury woolen cloth for sale in Naples in adequate quantities to offset company losses on grain. The Bardi and Peruzzi families seized on this opportunity as a way out of their problems and made their first large loans to Edward III in 1336, secured by licenses to import wool. By 1341 they were lending heavily to the English king, who used Florentine money to finance his rapidly expanding and extremely expensive military and diplomatic campaigns. The pope expressed his displeasure at the companies rendering such valuable assistance to an enemy combatant, but by this time the Bardi and Peruzzi families could not get out of the business even if they wanted to—Edward owed them too much money.

  A further cause for worry, particularly in Italy and Avignon, was the advanced age of the king of Naples. Robert the Wise was noticeably failing. The Neapolitan succession that had been so carefully arranged would be tested upon his demise, and it was by no means assured that it would hold. If there was one consistent rule to medieval politics, it was that the death of a sovereign inevitably provoked uncertainty, and in uncertainty lay opportunity. Nothing bespeaks the veracity of this maxim, or the generally worsening conditions, than the hasty return of Catherine of Valois and her family to Naples from Achaia in August of 1341.

  The empress of Constantinople’s expedition to Greece had been reasonably successful. Just before her departure three years earlier, Catherine had been the beneficiary of a stroke of luck: members of the opposition party to the Byzantine emperor’s rule in neighboring Epirus had fomented an uprising. To this end, they had kidnapped the ten-year-old son of their former ruler from his mother’s care, intending to use him as a rallying point. Catherine, recognizing that this situation could be exploited to her advantage, had had the child smuggled across the Adriatic to her court in Naples for safekeeping and then conveyed him, along with the rest of her family, to Achaia when she sailed in the fall of 1338. Through a deft combination of her fleet’s ominous presence just off the coast and Niccolò Acciaiuoli’s discreet payoffs, Catherine managed to establish her rule in Achaia fairly quickly. She then turned her attention to Epirus and by early 1339 had successfully promoted a rebellion against an unpopular governor, substituting her pawn, the boy, as ruler in his place. Her influence didn’t last—the child surrendered to the Byzantine emperor, who arrived with an army the following year—but the scheme demonstrated Catherine’s penchant for intrigue and her willingness to use unorthodox methods when necessary.

  She was no doubt guided in her tactics by Niccolò’s sage advice. Based on his remuneration, Acciaiuoli seems to have proven himself invaluable to the empress in Greece. He was granted large estates in Achaia and was allowed to establish a banking office there that would turn out to be extremely useful for keeping family funds out of the hands of grasping depositors and creditors in mainland Italy. So much did Catherine come to rely on the Acciaiuolis that when she decided events in Naples demanded her return in 1341, the empress appointed one of Niccolò’s cousins to govern in her absence. Although many of the indigenous aristocracy objected to this arrangement, even appealing to the Byzantine emperor to overthrow Catherine’s rule, the cousin proved difficult to displace. By remaining loyal to its Neapolitan sponsors, Niccolò’s family would go on to increase its holdings and influence significantly in Achaia—so much so that one Acciaiuoli after another governed Achaia continuously until into the next century.

  Joanna was fifteen at the time of her reunion with her aunt, the empress of Constantinople, and her first cousins Robert, Louis, and Philip. She must have changed greatly during their three-year absence; no longer a child, by all accounts Joanna had matured into a radiant young woman, by nature playful, sunny, and full of life. Even the chronicler Domenico da Gravina, a contemporary of Joanna’s who lived in the kingdom and who was in no way sympathetic to her, was forced to admit that both Joanna and her sister, Maria, were endowed with a “wonderful” beauty. Her newly returned cousins had also grown up and were apparently equally attractive. Already, Robert, also fifteen, and Louis, fourteen, were
tall and blond and handsome, particularly Louis; they were athletes who had seen Greece and were supremely conscious of the figures they cut in society. Boccaccio, who knew the princes of Taranto well, was as infatuated with this pair as the rest of Naples. He immortalized them in his Elegy of Lady Fiammetta, written sometime between 1343 and 1345 when they were a little older:

  Our princes [Robert and Louis of Taranto] arrive on horses which run not only faster than any other animal but so fast that in running they would leave behind even those very winds believed to be the fastest; and the princes’ youth, their remarkable beauty, and their notable excellence makes them exceedingly pretty to those who look at them. They appear on caparisoned horses, dressed in crimson or in garments woven by native hands with designs of different colors and interwoven threads of gold and also garnished with pearls and precious stones; their long blond hair falling onto their extremely white shoulders is tied onto their head with a gold ringlet… Furthermore, their left hand is armed with a very light shield and their right one with a lance, and at the sound of the summoning trumpets, one after the other and followed by many others all wearing the same costume, they begin their jousting for the ladies.

  The contrast between these two paragons of Neapolitan young adulthood and Joanna’s own lord and master (for that is what husbands were called in the Middle Ages) was apparently obvious and disheartening. At fourteen, Andrew had yet to display the physical attributes that might have won him favor in the eyes of his female subjects. Given his ancestry, he was likely short for his age—his grandfather on his mother’s side had, after all, been nicknamed “the elbow-high.” Despite the lack of a surviving description of Andrew, Baddeley, who researched and wrote extensively about the kingdom of Naples during this period, nonetheless hypothesized that Andrew was “indolent; prefers food to anything else, and is likely always so to do; heavy-jawed, dull of eye, and, compared to Neapolitan boys, clumsy of figure.” This seems harsh, particularly as Andrew was still so young. It also conflicts, not unnaturally, with Hungarian assertions as to Andrew’s appearance and personal habits that proclaimed, “The young prince… as he grew in years, prepossessed everyone in his favor save his future bride.”

  In the absence of more solid evidence, the art of the period may perhaps present a small clue as to the disparity between Andrew’s culture and physical appearance and that of Joanna and her cousins. One of Andrew’s books, an illustrated codex depicting the lives of Hungarian saints, which his parents commissioned for their son’s education, survives. In it, most of the male figures are portrayed as swarthy and unkempt, with a profusion of facial hair. This is very different from the Neapolitan manuscript art of the period, as represented by a treatise on music by Boethius that was illustrated for King Robert; it portrays men and women alike as delicate and graceful, with carefully arranged hair and elegant dress. These two books existed side by side and yet their aesthetics are so antithetical that it seems as though each emerged from a different, wholly incompatible world, and this, likely, approximates Andrew’s predicament in Naples.

  Andrew might have compensated for his less-than-imposing physical presence by force of manner or intellectual ability, but unfortunately these qualities, too, seem to have been lacking. His mental and emotional development is reported to have lagged behind that of his prospective queen. There is evidence that, being unsure of himself, he relied heavily on the advice and companionship of his confessor, Friar Robert, whose obvious influence over his Hungarian charge was noted at court. “He [Andrew] was manifestly no suitable partner for his consort.” Again, given his youth, this was not quite fair. Certainly it is the rare adolescent boy whose demeanor is such that it impresses those around him.

  Although clearly this was not a love match—being married to Andrew must have been a little like being wed to an annoying younger brother—Joanna accepted her circumstances. She was by this time keenly aware of critics’ accusations that her grandfather had usurped the throne from his nephew and that by her marriage and, most important, the production of an heir, these allegations might be forever silenced. There is every indication that Joanna greatly admired Robert the Wise and sought to emulate his policies throughout her life, and that she was willing to sacrifice personal happiness toward this goal.

  And yet, by the summer of 1342, Joanna’s marriage remained unconsummated. Since at sixteen the duchess of Calabria was already well past the age of consent—in the Middle Ages, marital relations were sanctioned once the bride turned thirteen—the delay must have been attributable to her husband’s immaturity (thereby buttressing the argument that at fifteen Andrew was still somewhat backward in terms of mental and physical development). The expedition to Sicily for which the duke of Calabria had been named commander was clearly intended by Robert as a means for Andrew to prove his manhood. Although originally scheduled to depart in the early spring of 1342, the invasion was delayed several times, seemingly due to its leader’s reluctance to leave. (In fact, it never came off, even though the men and materials were in place.) To prod Andrew into undertaking this military service, the king announced that, after returning from Sicily at Easter of the following year (1343), the duke of Calabria would be formally knighted and his marriage finally consummated.

  More than Andrew’s slow development caused the delay, however. On July 16, 1342, a death intervened, that of Carobert, the king of Hungary. His widow, Elizabeth, in an effort to ensure a stable and orderly transition of power, lost no time in crowning her eldest son, Louis, Andrew’s older brother, king in her husband’s place. The coronation occurred on July 21, less than a week after Carobert’s death.

  Louis was only sixteen when he assumed his father’s place on the throne. Very few teenagers ruled in the Middle Ages; instead, a regent or council of advisers, chosen from among the kingdom’s most powerful noblemen, was usually appointed to take control of the realm until the sovereign came of age. But this did not occur in Hungary after Carobert’s death, because the native baronage knew they did not have to worry about their sovereign’s lack of experience. A shrewd political tactician, highly proficient at management, still held tight to the reins of government: Louis’ most trusted and influential adviser, his mother, Elizabeth.

  The queen mother’s authority extended into every particular of the royal prerogative, but nowhere was her presence felt more powerfully than in the arena of international affairs. Elizabeth’s policies were entirely focused on expanding Hungarian influence in Eastern Europe and on maintaining strong ties with her native Poland. As far as the queen mother was concerned, Hungarian rule in Naples was already established in the person of her younger son, who she fully expected would be crowned king upon the death of Robert the Wise. There was therefore no need, in her mind, to adhere to the second stage of the original treaty, which stipulated that her eldest son, Louis, wed Joanna’s younger sister, Maria. To throw away Louis’ marriage prospects on the younger granddaughter of the king of faraway Naples, when he could be making a much more attractive regional alliance, represented a wasted opportunity and a violation of Hungarian interests. Even before her husband’s death, the queen mother had advocated that Louis be engaged instead to the daughter of the heir to the Bohemian throne. At Elizabeth’s insistence then, in the fall of 1342, Louis married Margaret, the seven-year-old princess of Bohemia.

  Robert the Wise took this rejection of his granddaughter Maria as a direct slap at Angevin pride. On January 16, 1343, visibly near the end of his days and too weak to arise from his bed, but nonetheless “sound of mind and able to speak,” the king dictated his last will and testament. In the presence of witnesses he reconfirmed Joanna as his successor and sole heir to the throne of Naples, as well as to the rest of his far-flung empire (“Rex… instituit sibi haeredem universalem Joannam, ducissam Calabriae, meptem ejus primogenitam”), which the king of Naples listed as the countship of Provence, the sovereignty of Sicily, and the inherited title to Jerusalem, as well as overlordships in Piedmont and Forcalquier. If Joa
nna died childless, this immense inheritance went directly to Maria, bypassing Andrew altogether. There was no mention of Andrew’s being crowned king, not even in an honorary fashion as consort. By this will, then, Andrew was very publicly excluded from rule or indeed from playing any role whatever in his wife’s government.

  To further punish the Hungarians, Robert the Wise also improved Maria’s standing at court. Should the long-contracted marriage between Joanna’s younger sister and Louis of Hungary fail to take place (an allusion to the union with Margaret of Bohemia), Maria was instead specifically instructed to wed the heir to the French throne, or, if he were not available, a younger brother of the French royal family. In recognition that the accomplishment of so brilliant an alliance as a match with the crown of France was likely to require further inducement, Robert made provision for Maria’s estate to be increased by a handsome bequest of lands, castles, men, and vassals estimated at a value of ten thousand florins in addition to a dowry of thirty thousand florins in cash, to be paid at the time of her marriage. By this will, then, Maria was made an heiress.

  Special attention was also paid to Joanna’s position as a minor. The document called for the establishment of a special council, chaired by Sancia, to rule in the young queen’s place until she reached the age of her majority, which Robert the Wise denoted as twenty-five. Andrew and Maria were also considered minors, which meant they could not enter into legal contracts without the express permission of the special council, until this age. Since Naples was a fief of the papacy, and Joanna its vassal, the document made plain that the special council recognized the authority of the pope and commended the heir to the throne and the kingdom to his protection, a bid for the continuation of a foreign policy that relied heavily on the cultivation of an exceptionally close relationship with the Holy See as the source of Angevin Guelphic authority throughout Italy.